When he learnt that Captain John Lort Stokes from the Beagle, a former shipmate, had named a beautiful bay in northern Australia by his name, evolutionist Charles Darwin must have been quite flattered. It was back in 1839, and the name was Port Darwin back then. For almost a century, the city grew around its harbour. In 1871, when gold was discovered in the area, the growth accelerated, and not only with good people. Therefore, the year 1889 saw the opening of Fannie Bay Gaol, shelter for the turbulent ones. Some of them even got closely acquainted with the gallows, the last two of them in 1952. So far, nothing but the normal life of city in those days.
But in 1937, Mother Nature decided to get involved, throwing a massive cyclone onto the city. But the people here had seen more, so they took their brooms, wiped the rubbles and built their city again. Work was almost finished when WWII began. At first, Australian boys were sent half around the world to fight for the Empire. But the Empire lost pieces, the biggest certainly being Singapore. Five days after the fall of that city, Japanese airplanes were bombing Darwin, whose deep water harbour was the last allied one in the area. On 18th February 1942, some 250 Japanese planes launched the first and most terrible of the 64 air raids the city would endure during the war. At the end of it, everybody was back at the broom.
After some years, the city was back to normal. A peace it enjoyed for three decades. Until the fateful Christmas of 1974, when Tracy walked into town. Not the blond, long-legged Tracy from Hooters. This one was another gift from Mother Nature, a super-cyclone. Out of the 14’000 houses the city counted at that time, less than fifty were left unscathed. And instead of saying To Hell with it, people again went to their brooms. So, after so much destruction and reconstruction, I think maybe a change of name could stop the curse. The obvious New Darwin is still way to close. I think something like Resilience, or Stubbornness would be more appropriate.
